Competition Winners Announcement: Your Fondest Frontier Memory!

Community Manager

As part of our 25th anniversary celebrations, we ran a competition in January where we asked people to share their favourite Frontier memories! We were absolutely blown away by the responses, and we've loved reading through your experiences – we so pleased to have recieved such a diverse and interesting set of responses! All the winners were chosen at random, and you can see the names of the lucky winners below. We have already reached out to you to claim your prize, but if you see your name in the list and you haven’t received any contact from us, please do get in touch. If in doubt, check your inbox on the platform that you entered the competition in.

We also gave away a game, DLC or an Elite Dangerous Store Item of the winners choice to 25 runners-up! See the list below of the winners, and congratulations:

TheJamsie"I was so emotional when I flew to Lave for the brandy run, so many good memories when I was young playing Elite. What a journey."

James Barnes"Loading Elite Dangerous and seeing the Coriolis interior for the first time!"

T4ttyt3ddy"Mine is last year, I tried ED at launch, I never gave it the time it deserved, last year some colleagues jumped into the game for the first time and I tried it again. I realised to enjoy the game fully you had to embrace the community too, we talk about Elite most days at work now!"

Gelleriewe"My fondest memory would probably be the horizon expansion announcement for #EliteDangerous and this week's powerplay results:All hail the Empress!"

Rtcnmp"I was too young for the first Elite. I've discovered the 2nd on an Amiga. So many years later, space is back, with some bug, but really nice to play. Thank for all this great moment. With rage sometimes. Lol"

Enigma_Solovar"A friend gifted me Elite Dangerous back in 2015, during 1.2 or 1.3 patch and it have been a stable part of my gaming cycle since then, that I always come back to. 1500+ hours in at this point and I don't see my self putting it on the shelf any time soon."

Escovaboladora"That first time you jump with your VR headset in your ship is magical... with your own joystick and all that cockpit all for you..."

LtEvildead"Mine would have to be meeting so many of you with my son at Frontier Expo 2017."

Robert Berry"For me, it was playing Elite in the MSX and becoming Elite. The game was so well ported."

Marinus Emmers"The first time i saw someone streaming elite dangerous and it was almost a year on the market couldn't believe I never had heard of the game, so after work went home and bought the game right away what an overwhelming experience it was."

Terry Geo"Spending many years building the perfect park in RCT3 and then the joy of doing it again in Planet Coaster. From pre-launch to now I'm still enjoying building and creating in PC."

Adam Harries"Completing Codex for Inner Orion Spur (confirming all 173 entries) including having to make a few 4.52g landings with rather a lot of carto data onboard at the time."

Chris Dornbusch"I got first time intercepted in Elite plus 1991. I got killed so quickly but it was so cool and a surprise. Still one of the best moments in my gamers life."

Nik Kolesnikov"Unforgettable moments of the first dock, the first interception targoids, all Elite on the Speccy. But the strongest impression of the two-day marathon, without getting up from the keyboard-and in the end-the coveted rank of Elite. Thank you FD for returning the impressions of youth, with the release of Elite Dangerous."

Steven Smeep Fellows"Finally gave me the coaster game I had been waiting for since I was a child!"

Alex McCarthy"That first drive by next to earth, then getting out of there before the authorities found me"

SuicidalFoetus"Seeing Elite running on a BBC Model B back in 1984 with hidden line removal on the ships was awe inspiring at the time. I then bought the game on the Acorn Electron cassette version, only to find feature like suns missing from the game. But the graceful joy of following a Python into the station was awe inspiring at the time. As for the trumbles, (tribbles in all but name). Carrying food once you had trumbles in the ship was a waste of time as the cute little bundles of joy would eat any food in the cargo hold. I enjoyed the challenge of trying to take down a pirate with a trumble sitting smack dab in the middle of the view screen. As for getting rid of the little so and so's, I remember having to fly close to the sun as the heat killed them off. But if even one was left alive when you flew away from the sun, they would begin to multiply all over again. I can't remember if trumbels were on the Electron version or not, but I went on to own Elite on the C64 and Amiga."

John Plainman"My fondest memory happened just the other day. I mostly solo in Elite Dangerous and had RPdecided to support the religious monks in Van Maanens Star and get their permit. Upon getting it and docking in the Van Maanen system station, I was shocked to see a faction called Hutton Orbital Truckers was the controlling faction! This eventually lead me to learning about a ton of player communities and initiatives taking place and has completely immersed me in this game world. Also, flying with a HOTAS for the first time was a borderline religious experience!!"

LazerusKI"My fondest memory? I have sadly never played the original elite, but someday i will. i think my father has it somewhere. so my journey with frontier begain with Elite Dangerous. And i regret nothing. So what was my favourite moment then? i guess that was the first time i actually traveled through the bubble. at the very beginning i was always very close to the starter system, afraid to travel further away. then i read a bit about the lore, learned about the empire, and decided to travel there. the journey was hard for my sidewinder, lost it even as i didnt know that fuel scoops are a thing, so i was left in the dark with no station to refuel. after several hours and dozens of jumps i finally made it, my journey in the empire began. the arrival there was my favourite moment. finally in a safe station again."

TFB Daerist"Way back to the first Elite, on BBC B. I realised I'd played it a little too excessivly when our pet budgie started making the same noise the pulse lasers made."

Pentateuch"So, Elite and me started together in 1984 under slightly... contentious circumstances. It goes like this... I worked as a Saturday boy at a leading High Street electrical retailer, and we sold computers. BBC B's, Dragons, Ataris, Acorn Atoms, all that. We also sold the games. And there were a lot of hi-fi units with double cassette decks, and lots of cassettes in the shop. So, as any enterprising teenager would, I knocked off a copy of Elite for myself, as I had a BBC B at home. It took me three attempts to get a copy that would load, though, and even that would never load first time onto my Beeb. Usually managed it by the third (fourth or fifth) time of trying. Then I could immerse myself in a brilliant 32bit universe the like of which was nowhere to be found anywhere else. Many's the time when my parents screamed up the stairs for me to "get off that bloody computer" and come down for dinner. Probably amongst the first parents to do that, at the start of the age of computer games. They were pioneers.

I got to be Elite on that knock-off copy. I was very proud of that, although guilt (and the desire to own the wonderful manual that came with the game, still a classic) overtook me and I bought it, eventually. Time, education, work and family overtook me, and my Beeb and my illegal games went to the landfill as they do. Other versions of Elite wafted into my view, but they never had the brilliance of the first one and my interest waned. In my late thirties, I bought an old Beeb from a computer fair and another copy of Elite, just to own, not to play (although it's still in the loft so, who knows?). Then came Elite Dangerous. I'm sorry, but I was skeptical (the releases since the first one weren't good) so I waited and, therefore, never got a Founders pass (regretting that decision). But I got it when it came out and it has been bloody awesome! It's right back to 1984 when you got a thrill at every rank increase, the Thargoids are here (although slightly too beefy for this 52 year old) and the galaxy is simply stunning. I always prefer flying the old ships... it took a while to part ways with my Cobra MkIII... and I tend to fly Pythons now. I use it to relax, doing a lot of trade runs and, generally, gazing at the beautiful starfields, planets and stars, brilliantly authentic space stations and ships. So, there you have it. I'm sorry I nicked it, back in the day, but it was worth it. The first really BIG computer game, in scope, depth and gameplay, and I played it to death. Elite has been in my life since I was 17. It'll still be there when I'm 71."

Sailor"My moment was in school, at lunch time we could go into the computer room and mess about with the BBC B computers. after going for a few months i built up a good relationship with the teacher (Mr Wilkes) and another couple of students who were older than me. We chatted and talked computers played the odd game, Then 1 day my Wilkes fetched in a new game, is comment were you will be amazed at this game. After loading it up it was... ELITE and i was blown away of the vectra graphics. From the 1st moment of seeing the game i loved it. But sadly i could not afford a BBC B computer (or my parents for that matter). I still played it at the club for a while and after a short space of time my parents gave in and bought me Commodore 64, And yes my 1st game to load on the Commodore 64 was ELITE and when Frontier came out i bought that too.

Several years later when i heard ELITE DANGEROUS was coming out i had to buy it and as a bonus its launch date on my birthday 16th December. Over 4 years on.. Still loving the game, cant wait and see what is coming next. O7 CMDR's see you in the void.."

Harlequin Dusk

"My fondest memory would have to be when I first started bounty hunting on ED with two of my friends. Must have been around the Powerplay update as we started on Xbox and have since migrated to PC. We had set up ourselves in Venetic, taking trips out to the nav beacon and camping there waiting for pirates to show their ugly mugs. We had no idea what we were doing and all we wanted to do was get enough credits to A-rate our ships (a Viper Mk4 for myself, Cobra mk3 for the other and the last had managed to scrape together enough for a Vulture). Our stomping grounds included Ho Hsien and Ravanahutis, and it is in the latter system my memory takes place.

One day we got bored with the nav beacon in Venetic and had heard tell of these fabled “Hazardous RES” places where the enemies were harder but the bounties were HUGE. So we upped sticks and jumped in to the nearest hazres, around 1000ls from the outpost in ‘Hutis. Straight off we find an elite anaconda and we all start jumping for joy (we had taken down condas before and knew they were “megabucks” - around 250k - how little we knewin those early days!) and immediately set about warrant scanning and initiating the fight, hoping for a death roll situation for easy creds.Our mistake was realised almost immediately. Cobra goes down in less than a minute, the Conda turns and tracks him easily, taking him out with beams and multis, before setting his sights on myself in the Viper. My shields are boiling away as I shout at Vulture to evade around asteroids until we rebuy at the outpost and can come back and support him. He grunts the affirmative and my Viper disintegrates around me.

I make my way back to the haz res at top speed - we can’t lose this kill, it would pay our rebuys a few times over - checking in with Vulture all the way, hearing him swear as he gets tagged time and again in his cat and mouse chase around the asteroids. My fsd drops me back into the site and I can see the condas beams flaring around the boulders. After a quick exchange of tactics, Vulture and I agree to start tag teaming the Conda and whittle it down while the others shields are repairing. We manage to drop the pirates shields and start shouting our triumph as his hull percentage slowly but surely starts dropping. I realise that Cobra is not here, hasn’t been since the initial exchange so I call out. He answers saying he’s just leaving the outpost and would be there in a minute or two to help us deliver the coup de grace. And then we start getting hit hard.

The pirate Conda has managed to work us out of the protection of the belt without us knowing and has got his eye on the Vulture. Vulture starts to dive towards the protection of the boulders below us but not before his shields are nixed and his hull and canopy are reduced to space debris. I’m ploughing every bit of ammunition I can into the pirate, racing his charging shields, and I shriek out to Cobra as Vulture gets tagged a final time and becomes a smear on the nearest rock. Cobra calls out that he’s dropped in and is boosting his way towards me and to just hold on. The Conda has 3 cycles till his shields are online and all is lost, but only has 8% hull, so I make the call and meet the pirate head on, hoping that Cobra will finish this in time for my survival. 7%...6%...5...

“Come on!” I shout at Cobra, my Viper taking a punishing mixture of laser and ordinance, reducing me to a shieldless 40% hull. He screams out “Kamikaze!!!” and I realise he’s going to sacrifice himself at top speed to finally kill this greatest of challenges. I silently salute him as his wing indicator at the top of my cockpit goes grey and I’m left alone... ...With a completely undamaged elite Anaconda stripping down the last of my hull while it’s shields ping online. “What happened?!” Vulture and I cry, as I die and we lose the pirate Conda forever. Then a mumbling voice simply says, “Missed. Hit an asteroid at full boost...” It was a wonderful moment of camaraderie and we could not stop laughing for a good while after. We still talk about it now. Needless to say...We didn’t go back to that HazRes again."

Thank you everyone who entered for sharing their memories with us, and helping to make our 25th anniversary truly special!